Ibsen's A Doll's House: Marriage and Gender in the 19th Century
This paper analyzes Henrik Ibsen's 1879 play A Doll's House through the lenses of new historicism and cultural criticism, drawing on contemporaneous sources such as "A Nineteenth Century Husband's Letter to His Wife." The paper explores whether Ibsen attacks marriage itself or the failure of 19th-century husbands to fulfill the Pauline ideal of selfless, loving partnership. It considers the play's possible allegorical dimensions regarding Norwegian national identity, situates Ibsen within the Romantic and Enlightenment tradition of individual liberty, and argues that Nora's departure represents a lament for an absent ideal of genuine wedlock rather than a wholesale rejection of marriage as an institution.
- Introduction: Ibsen, Marriage, and the Critical Framework: Critical lens and central thesis introduced
- Norwegian Nationalism and Allegory in A Doll's House: Play read as allegory for Norwegian independence
- Ibsen as Social Revolutionary: Enlightenment Values vs. Pauline Ideals: Ibsen's rejection of medieval Christian marriage ideals
- Divorce and Social Convention in the 19th Century: Historical context of divorce and marital roles
- Nora's Noble Aim and the Sham of Her Marriage: Nora's sacrifice exposes Torvald's hollow marriage
- The Ideal of Real Wedlock and Its Absence: Real wedlock contrasted with Marcus's tyrannical letter
- Conclusion: Emptiness of 19th-century marriage and modernity's failure
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper applies two named critical frameworks — new historicism and cultural criticism — consistently throughout, grounding literary analysis in historical and cultural context rather than abstract interpretation alone.
- It draws on a diverse range of sources, including a primary historical document ("A Nineteenth Century Husband's Letter to His Wife"), a secondary critic (Paul Johnson), and scriptural text (Ephesians 5:25), giving the argument unusual texture and depth for its length.
- The argument builds deliberately: it moves from the allegorical (Norwegian nationalism) to the literal (19th-century marriage customs) to the ideological (Pauline vs. Enlightenment values), creating a layered reading of the play.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates the technique of contextual juxtaposition — placing Ibsen's fictional marriage alongside a real historical document (Marcus's 1844 letter) to show that Nora's situation was not invented but reflected a documented social reality. This move from text to historical evidence and back to text is characteristic of new historicist methodology.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a thesis statement framing the critical approach, then develops two readings of the play (allegorical and literal) before grounding the analysis in 19th-century social history. It closes by connecting Nora's final words about "real wedlock" to a broader critique of modernity's rejection of the medieval Christian family ideal. The conclusion is tight and returns directly to the opening question.
Introduction: Ibsen, Marriage, and the Critical Framework
Henrik Ibsen's 1879 Norwegian play A Doll's House presents a none-too-flattering vision of 19th-century marriage and gender roles. But is Ibsen attacking marriage itself? From the perspectives of new historicism and cultural criticism, this paper will attempt to answer that question by drawing on information contemporaneous with Ibsen's drama — such as "A Nineteenth Century Husband's Letter to His Wife," which bears at least in essence the form of a real-life Nora-Torvald type of husband-wife relationship: one in which the husband fails to follow the Golden Rule, or the Pauline principle, "Husbands, love your wives" (Eph. 5:25).
Norwegian Nationalism and Allegory in A Doll's House
Ibsen, of course, had lived through a century in which his own nation had been subjugated to a foreign aggressor: Sweden. It was not until the 20th century that Norway was able to assert its independence and put the Swedish occupation and fidelity to the Swedish king behind it. If anything, A Doll's House may be read as an allegory for Norwegian nationality, with Nora coming to realize herself as an independent body fully capable and deserving of governing herself. When Nora casts off Torvald — who obviously loves himself more than her, and who has not the slightest conception of selflessness, thankfulness, or humility, virtues that Nora alone possesses — a new historicist or cultural critic could easily interpret this as a symbolic gesture of what every good Norwegian hoped for.
Ibsen as Social Revolutionary: Enlightenment Values vs. Pauline Ideals
Disregarding the play's symbolic dimension in favor of a more literal interpretation moves the literary critic into another sphere of social commentary: 19th-century marriage. As Paul Johnson observes in his critique of Ibsen, "Ibsen preached the revolt of the individual against the ancien régime of inhibitions and prejudices which held sway in every small town, indeed in every family. He taught men, and especially women, that their individual conscience and their personal notions of freedom have moral precedence over the requirements of society" (82). Ibsen, in other words, was a social revolutionary in the tradition of the Romantic and Enlightenment eras — a period whose doctrine was substantially divorced from the old-world teachings that had unified Europe in the medieval world and brought security to Norway in the tenth century under King Olav.
Ibsen, like much of the modern 19th-century world, had rejected the medieval mores associated with old-world religion and family structure, abandoning the Pauline scriptures for a philosophy based on "liberty, equality, and fraternity" — the motto of the French Revolution. Ibsen's Nora is, in this sense, a reflection of the spirit of Ibsen's age — the woman who realizes she has been playing a thankless role her whole life: the husband for whom she would sacrifice everything would not stoop to make the same sacrifice for her. What St. Paul would have judged an error on the part of the husband — and compelled him toward correction — Ibsen judges an inexcusable flaw in the social man-woman hierarchy. Ibsen's solution is not Paul's, which is Christ. Ibsen's solution is the dissolution of the marriage vows.
Conclusion
Ibsen's A Doll's House displays the emptiness of the 19th-century marriage, devoid of the charity recommended so strongly by St. Paul. New historicism and cultural criticism reveal that this emptiness stems not from our own projections, but from the times and events surrounding Ibsen's own day and the centuries of revolution that followed the end of the medieval world's Christian philosophy.
Works Cited
Engel, Margorie. "The History of Divorce." Flying Solo. Web. 8 Aug. 2011.
Ibsen, Henrik. "A Doll's House." Project Gutenberg. Web. 8 Aug. 2011.
Johnson, Paul. Intellectuals. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2007.
New Testament. New International Version, 1984. Biblos. Web. 8 Aug. 2011.
"A Nineteenth Century Husband's Letter to His Wife." 1844.
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